helo darqness wrote:sometimes xkcd lowers my self-esteem, as comics like this are so esoteric, i feel completely out of the loop and uneducated.

When that happens to me I feel the need to Google and Wikipedia enough information until I understand the jokes. I like it because I find myself getting smarter as a result. It may be hard with this one since pictures are hard to Google.

Does anyone know what the symbol with the circle and the squiggly line represents? That's not an aspect of a circuit diagram that I recognize and I can't find anything that looks like that in a quick Google search. There are at least two of them in the diagram, one next to the "omit this if you're a wimp" note and another next to the Pi ohm resistor.

Also, while we're on the subject cool random fact: that I've heard by word of mouth but never seen in a reliable source. Although the terminology goes diode, triode, tetrode, pentode, originally diodes were not called that because they had two wires going in but rather from "dia" and "ode" from the Greek for "through path." (I suspect this is true because the diode term was used long before there were triodes).

JoshuaZ wrote:Does anyone know what the symbol with the circle and the squiggly line represents? That's not an aspect of a circuit diagram that I recognize and I can't find anything that looks like that in a quick Google search. There are at least two of them in the diagram, one next to the "omit this if you're a wimp" note and another next to the Pi ohm resistor.

Also, while we're on the subject cool random fact: that I've heard by word of mouth but never seen in a reliable source. Although the terminology goes diode, triode, tetrode, pentode, originally diodes were not called that because they had two wires going in but rather from "dia" and "ode" from the Greek for "through path." (I suspect this is true because the diode term was used long before there were triodes).

No. It may help to note that there are two diodes allowing current to go into the arena, but only one allowing it to leave.

I thought it was a reference to the coliseum.I also noticed this whole thing looks like it's designed to power a light bulb. Randall needs to play some gizmo's and gadgets, because this circuit isn't a bright idea.